World Oil Production to Peak in 2013

Does anybody know, that according to some Oil Geologists (e.g. Colin
Campbell) in 2013 the world oil output is going to peak ? Are you
aware what this does mean for all of us ? We have 4 years from now,
until there will not be enough energy for travelling, heating and the
most important for food for everybody of us. Oil prices will begin to
peak, not 150 USD/barrel, much much higger prices are expected. Many
people will loose their jobs and many of us will begin to starve.
Alternatives will also be more expensive since the demand will
increase astronomically. Alternative energy will also be much much
more expensive, due to the demand and due to much higher costs. Making
a wind turbine cost a lot of energy. Making ethanol cost a lot of oil
(pesticides, insecticides, transportation, production, harvesting,
fertilizers etc.). Making insulations cost also a lot of oil.
What is the solution ? The only way is to act now, individually. Now,
where the oil prices are still cheap, although there is an increase,
each individual can begin to prepare himself for these hard times in
near future. Insulation of houses, solar cells, which are now more
affordable (in ebay 1 W solar cells cost 1 USD or even less), solar
water heating, solar heating with mirrors reflecting the sunlight to
your home in winter, making your own wind turbine (a lot of
instruction of cheap design can be found in the internet), buying a
plug-in car or a hybrid vehicle, using energy efficient lightning,
heating with heat pumps, making a winter garden etc. are some of the
things each of us can do to prepare himself/herself for hard times and
to save money and energy. There are also ways to save energy and try
to extend the date a little bit by using the car only when necessary,
using the bike instead of your car, using public transportation,
converting the car to methane fueling, saving energy where ever it is
possible, not only in your home also in your work, etc. will help to
extend the date.
The other alternative is to wait until this date, actually the
economical crisis is in its ending phase and the oil prices will again
rise to record highs. But this is nothing compared to the prices when
world oil supplies will deminish 4% yearly. And after this date (2013)
very very hard times may come. Starvation and even worse things like
war are the alternative.
If you act now, you will also help to produce new jobs in your
country.
Regards.
You can find much more on: http://www.peakoil.net /

Oh bother!
When Europe ran out of forests to harvest for charcoal, they turned to coal.
Heck, the Industrial Revolution was coal-powered. When the coal got
uneconomical, the world turned to oil. If cheap oil gets scarce, we'll find
something else.
And we're NOT running out of oil (we may be getting low on CHEAP oil).
World-wide proven reserves are greater than they've ever been. If all the
environmentalists would just go somewhere and die, we'd have cheap oil for
the next twenty generations.

Demand for oil is also greater than it's ever been, and increasing at
an exponential rate (the current recession not withstanding.) And,
it's been many a year since we discovered as much new oil as we pumped
out.
The coming production peak means we will have used about half the
recoverable oil in the ground. It's taken us about 100 years to get to
this point, and for a lot of that time, demand was much less than it
is today. So, going forward, you can bet it'll take a lot less than
100 years to use the rest. Twenty generations? I don't think so.
You're correct, though, that for the immediate future, we'll be
running low on cheap oil. After the peak, we'll no longer be able to
pump enough oil to meet demand and, thus, oil production will become
supply limited instead of demand limited as it is now.
Since oil prices tend to be inelastic (i.e., price changes don't have
a lot of impact on demand,) prices are likely to rise. How much
depends on how successful conservation efforts are.

Where did you get that idea? Every oil shock has produced marked falls
in demand above a certain level. That is where the urban legend about
the life saving capabilities of the 55 mph limit came about. Driving
(and other oil activities) fell off a cliff in the 70s and so did the
fatalities. During that time, the fatalities per million miles driven
stayed roughly the same while the number of miles driven fell.

--
"Distracting a politician from governing
is like distracting a bear from eating your baby."

We have not yet discovered all the world's accessible oil deposits.
(nor began drilling or producing from what we have discovered.)
So any claim of "peak oil" can be made is just a psychic prediction,and
worth about as much.

Dimly understood processes, eh? Now who's in need of a psychic? It
would be nice if you were right, but I'm not holding my breath.
You're right about one thing, though - it's hard to predict the peak
in advance. But, it will come, nonetheless. And, while there will be
new discoveries, I wouldn't hold my breath for a miracle. Current
estimates of recoverable oil are based in part on what we expect to
find. So, in essence, the "new discoveries" are already accounted for.
All the counter arguments you put forth have been heard before - in
the 1950s. Back then, it was put forth that the US would have a
production peak in the coming decade. Then, as now, there were howls
of derision and lots of folks with their head in the sand that were
convinced that the oil would last forever.
US oil production peaked in 1970. Today, the US produces about half of
the oil we did then. No amount of new discoveries, better technology,
or "dimly understood processes" has been able to change that.

Bur the peak of US oil production is largely a function of politics.
We peaked in the production of oil that current laws and regulations
will let us get at. Open up Alaskan areas (and especially the Gulf and
other off-shore reserves) and we get a spike.

--
"Distracting a politician from governing
is like distracting a bear from eating your baby."

Politics plays a part, sure. But oil production is primarily driven by
geology and economics. There're already plenty of places in the US
that could be developed today.
As for Alaska? The most optimistic estimates put the recoverable oil
around 16 billion barrels. Sounds like a lot...but it's only enough to
meet US demand for 2 additional years.
Unfortunately, no combination of politics or economics is going to
change the simple reality that there's only so much oil in the ground
and our appetite for it is seemingly unending.

Such as?
IMO,you're full of crap,because with the recent high gas prices,they would
have already begun producing. The only new domestic production I've read
about is the individual land owners up in the Dakotas who drilled their own
lands and sell the oil themselves.

If you'll recall the debate last year about opening up abunch of new
areas to drilling, it was pointed out quite often that the oil
companies are sitting on lots of existing leases that they aren't
using.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm
Why aren't they drilling there? Economics! Not politics.

Whether he does or not is irrelevant. He doesn't control the world
supply. But, as we approach and pass the production peak, prices are
quite likely to increase. and dramatically.
Without high prices, though, there's not a lot of incentive to develop
substitutes, which we're going to have to do. And, the sooner we do
that, the less painful the post-peak world will be.

No more dimly than the classic view: "The original creation of oil or
petroleum is not well understood. There are several theories, but the matter
is still one of scientific controversy."
http://www.bydesign.com/fossilfuels/links/html/oil/oil_create.html
One of the big "gotchas" is how did hydrocarbons pop up on Jupiter and
Saturn if hydrocarbon creation depended solely on decomposed plant material?
Then there's this book: "The deep, hot, biosphere"
(Amazon.com product link shortened)43340325&sr=8-1

I agree that no amount of discoveries or technology will change production
rates. Changes in the political world will. But it doesn't matter.
Oil is fungible. Oil from here is pretty much the same as oil from there.
Price is pretty much inelastic.
Furthering the goal of increased domestic production to diminish reliance on
foreign hostile regimes is kinda silly in that most of our "foreign" oil
comes from Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria.

You're certainly correct that more study and research is needed. But,
the consensus today is that the vast majority of oil and coal
formation requires millions of years of heat and pressure.
So, is oil being "created" today? Certainly. Is it being created fast
enough to help us? I wouldn't hold my breath.
Thus far, no evidence of old oil fields "sponanteously recharging"
themselves has presented itself.

Political changes will have some effect, but oil production is more a
matter of economics and geology.
If all regulations were eliminated tomorrow, and we could drill and
produce anywhere, it still wouldn't move the production peak by more
than a couple of years. And, it would make the decline that much more
painful.

Consensus? Sure. There is still a substantial group that doesn't buy it.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

In most parts of the world, true. In the continental U.S., politics plays a
substantial role in oil production.

Even if you're right that we'd get only two years, that's stll two years
more research, two years cheaper energy, and a two years greater chance that
India and China will engage in a nuclear war - with two billion dead -
thereby diminishing world demand for oil by 40%.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
I misspoke. "Most" of our imported oil does not come from Canada, Mexico,
and Nigeria. These three countries account for a measly 30%. You have to add
Saudi Arabia and Iraq to get above 50%.
According to the text:
"The top five exporting countries accounted for 64 percent of United States
crude oil imports..."
The top five are Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Angola. While
some are not exactly "friends" of the United States, none are overtly
"hostile."

<SNIP past this point>
There is little credible claim of hydrocarbons or better still organic
compounds in general in general relying on decomposition of plant material
to come into existence when there is evidence that such compounds exist
but evidence of actual life forms is lacking.
High temperatures are considered likely to exist in deeper layers of the
atmosphere of the planets that consist mostly of atmosphere, lightning is
known to exist in the clouds of Jupiter, and plenty of hydrogen and carbon
can be found in some form or another in those planets. Most of the
hydrocarbon content determined so far to exist in the "gas giant" planets
is methane last time I heard.
For another thing, there is tendency among biologists to consider that
presence of organic compounds is a prerequisite for origin of life, and
not the other way around.
Meanwhile, fossil fuels on Earth are traceably all so old as to lack
carbon-14 to extent indicating age of 40,000 years or more - and it is
generally considered that when C-14 is present to extent of age under 6 or
7 figures, it is from contamination rather than from the fossil fuel being
actually being so recently formed. Most fossil fuels are found in rock
formations indicating age more like 200-300 million years when that can be
determined and I have yet to hear of any accompanied by decent evidence
that they were less than 10's of millions of years old.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Who considers Nigeria to be much of a friend of USA?
They are ruled (by not that great a majority) by a nominally-Christian
extremely-corrupt bunch that, among other things, makes Nigeria's #2
export and America's most-noted import from Nigeria being scams as noted
in all-too-much notable e-mail spam.
As for second place faction in Nigeria, that is fundamentalist Muslims
so backwardly fundamentalist that it took foreign embarassment effort to
stop them from executing a rape victim for adultery.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Still, you've got to admire their technical ability, inventiveness, and
entrepreneurial skills. Kinda like the pirates in Somalia.

Yeah, shameful that we would try to impose our moral standards on an
equivalent culture. An under-commandment in Islam is that women are
temptresses and men, however strong, will always succumb to overt
blandishments. We just need to understand and empathize with their way of
life.

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